The History of Chess. H. J. R. Murray
in the technical sense of square of the board. It has sometimes been suggested that the Sanskrit term was used as a result of the well-known Arabic legend of the reward bestowed upon the inventor of chess, a calculation which is so thoroughly Indian in character that it may be supposed to be much older that the earliest record of it now existing. It is more likely, I think, that the name koshṭ·hikā suggested the calculation of the sum of the grains of wheat than that the calculation suggested the name for the square of the board.
F. W. Thomas was the first to call attention to this passage in the ZDMG. (lii. 271). In a later note (ibid., liii. 364) he called attention to the use of the word varshākāla, ‘time of the rains’, or ‘the rains as Kāla’, and endeavoured to establish the reference to Kāla as a technicality of the game. As his argument is based upon the assumption that the Indian chessboard was already chequered in Subandhu’s time, it loses any weight it might otherwise have had. The chessboard has only begun to be chequered in Asia in our own time as the result of European influences. If the reference to Kāla has anything behind it, it is probably nothing more than the old and widely spread commonplace that fate plays its game with men for pieces.2
Slightly later than Subandhu is Bāṇa, who lived in the early part of the seventh century. Several possible references to chess have been discovered in his works by Macdonell and Thomas. Macdonell first called attention in the Athenaeum (July 24, 1897) to a passage in the Harshachārita, ‘the earliest attempt at historical romance in Indian literature’, in which Bāṇa gives an account of Srīharsha (Harshavardhana), the famous King of Kānyakubja,3 and supreme ruler of Northern India from 606 to 648 A.D., under whose patronage the work was produced. The passage contains a number of puns, and among others Bāṇa in describing the peace and good order of the realm remarks (Bombay edn., p. 86, 1. 11; Kashmir edn., p. 182, 1. 1) that
under this monarch (Srīharsha) … only bees (shatpada) quarrel in collecting dews (dues); the only feet cut off are those in metre: only ashṭāpadas teach the positions of the chaturanga.4
This reference seems to me particularly clear, and the rhetorical figure (parisankhyā) employed is admirably illustrated by the play on the two meanings of the word chaturanga. The mention of the name of the game, chaturanga, makes it plain that in this passage the word ashṭāpada is used in its original sense of a game-board, and not as the name of a game.
Thomas (ZDMG., lii. 272) has pointed to another passage of a highly figurative character in the same work. In this Bāṇa (Bombay edn., p. 10, 11. 10–12; Kashmir edn., p. 20, 11. 5–8; Eng. trans., p. 6) describes an angry sage as
contracting a frown which, as if the presence of Kāla had been obtained, darkened the ashṭāpada of his forehead, and was the crocodile ornament which bedecks the wives of Yama.
The scholiast explains ashṭāpada as chaturangaphalaka, i.e. the chessboard, but there is nothing in the passage itself to require chess. The simile would be suggested by the resemblance between the deep furrows on the brow of the angry sage, and the dividing lines of the game-board. Thomas suggested an explanation depending on the ‘mottled squares of the chessboard’: this is of course an anachronism.
Two passages also from Bāṇa’s Kādambarī have been cited as possibly containing references to chess. In Redding’s English version they are thus translated:
dice and chessmen (sāryaksheshu) alone left empty squares (p. 6),
and
Chandrapida went away at her departure followed by maidens sent for his amusement by the poetess at Kādambarī’s bidding, players on lute and pipe, singers, skilful dice and draught (ashṭāpada) players, practised painters and reciters of graceful verses (p. 152).
I do not think that we can accept either of these allusions as relating to chess. The use of the word sāri in the earlier passage makes it practically certain that a race-game of the pachīsī type is intended. In the second there is nothing to exclude the possibility that the older ashṭāpada game was intended.
Much more certain are the two references from Kashmirian poets of the ninth century which Jacobi gave in the ZDMG. in 1896 (1. 227 ff.). The earlier of these occurs in the Haravijaya or Victory of Siva (xii. 9), an extensive mahākāvya or artificial epic, by Ratnākara, a poet who mentions Bālabrihaspati or Chippata-Jayāpīda, King of Kashmīr, 837–47, as his patron, and whom a later writer, Kalhaṇa (Rājataranginī, v. 34), states to have been celebrated under Avahtivarman, 857–84. The chess passage is worded with the double meaning that was so favourite a device of the later Sanskrit poets. The poet is speaking of Aṭṭahāsa, one of Siva’s attendants, and if we read the passage one way it describes him as one
who continually turned the enemy in spite of the latter’s four-square force, of his abundance of foot-soldiers, horses, chariots, and elephants, and of his skilled operations with peace (sandhi) and war (vigraha), into one whom defeat never left (anashṭa-āpadam).
When read another way it may be translated—
who turned not into a chessboard (an-ashṭāpadam) the enemy who had a four-square (chaturasra) form, who abounded in foot-soldiers (patli), horses (ashwa), chariots (rat·ha), and elephants (dvipa), and who had the form (vigraha) of combination (sandhi),
i.e. according to Jacobi (op. cit., 228) and Macdonell (JRAS., 123), of two halves folding together, with reference to the symmetry of the arrangement. There can be no doubt from the mention of the four members along with the ashṭāpada that chess is intended, notwithstanding the non-use of the word chaturanga. The commentator, Alaka, son of Rājanaka Jayānaka, who probably lived in the 12th c., so understood it, for he explains ashṭāpada as chaturaṅgaphalaka.
The second passage is from the Kāvyālaṅkāra, a work by a slightly later writer, Rudraṭa, who is ascribed to the reign of Sankaravarman, 884–903 (adhyaya 6). He is enumerating different kinds of stanzas, composed to imitate the forms of various objects, and speaks (v. 2) of verses which have the shapes of
wheel, sword, club, bow, spear, trident, and plough, which are to be read according to the chessboard squares (chaturangapīṭ·ha) of the chariot (rat·ha), horse (turaga), elephant (gaja), &c.
The commentator Nami, who dates his work 1125 Vikr. = 1069 A.D., and who lived in Guzerat, explains chaturangapiṭha as chaturangaphalaka, and adds the comment ‘known to players’, and etc. as nara, by which we are to understand the foot-soldier (patti).5
1. Knight’s Tour (Rudraṭa).
2. Rook’s Tour (Rudraṭa).
3. Elephant’s Tour (Rudraṭa).
Rudraṭa next goes on to give examples of these metrical puzzles, and Jacobi discusses the three chess-puzzles at considerable length. The principle of construction is as follows: certain syllables are placed in the various squares of a half chessboard in such a way that whether the syllables be read straight on as if there were no chessboard, or be read in accordance with the moves of a particular piece the same verse is obtained. The ability to frame such puzzles argues considerable acquaintance with the moves of the chess-pieces, and the metrical conditions of the puzzle add largely to the difficulty of construction.
There is no difficulty in the cases of the rathapadapātha (chariot or rook tour) and the turagapadapātha (Knight’s tour). With the help of the commentator the solutions are easily ascertained. The move of the Turaga or Horse is identical with the existing move of the Knight. The Rat·ha’s move also is consistent with the existing move of the Rook. Both tours are so constructed that they can easily be extended to cover the whole board. Jacobi (op. cit., 229) notes that the Knight’s tour appears to have been very popular, since the commentator Nami gives a sloka which names the squares of the chessboard by akshara ha to sa.
The